Robotic shoe manufacture line – Design for automatization

Project developed by Eva Klabalová and Atom lab (Italy) presented live at Simac Tanning Tech in Italy, the world’s largest trade show for footwear machinery.

A production line with fairly affordable robots and printers, proving that it is very feasible to make footwear production local again or even to make shoes directly in a store, while you wait.

ALSO FIT FOR HUMANS

Eva Klabalova designed the shoes and the workflow as part of her graduation from SLEM’s Master of Footwear innovation. She also designed various separate upper panels that are interchangeable and can make the shoes very versatile.

The shoe was designed to be made by robots, which essentially meant that construction had to be simplified to fit the ability of the Yumi. However, the end result can also be made very quickly and with minimal labour by humans. There i the possibility of also using this system for developing countries and for young designers and start-ups.

MAKING FOOTWEAR PRODUCTION POSSIBLE FOR EVERYONE

The whole assembly process now takes about ten minutes per shoe, but that excludes printing the sole and the last, which each take about eight hours. This means that production as such is not very fast yet, but it does offer a high level of customization. For instance, customers can choose the colour and material of their upper or have their own graphics or logo printed on it. The same goes for the outsole. It is expected that printing time will go down drastically in the future as the technology evolves.

The printers that were used cost around 2000 euros each and a Yumi robot is about 50.000 euros. That makes the format affordable for small companies and retailers.